How to Make Herbal Soap – Methods and Recipe

Natural herbal soap making is something I LOVE to do! I love the creativity that’s involved, as well as the nourishing benefits of the final product. So I’m excited to teach you how to make herbal soap!

I only use natural, healthy ingredients and stay away from anything that’s even questionable. There aren’t a lot of teachers out there who stand firm in this regard. There are too many who end up adding toxic fragrances, colors, and other additives like titanium dioxide and man dyed micas.

There’s no need to add poor ingredients that, in my opinion, ruin your final product when there are so many options out there! If you’re here, chances are you think think the same way.

How to Make Herbal Soap

A lot of you have great questions. Here are a few:

What are beneficial herbs to use in soap?

What are some methods for adding herbs?

Do herbs need to be prepped before-hand?

I’ll answer these questions now. Let me know in the comments if you have other questions. If I don’t know the answer, I’m sure some of our other great soapers can help.

Methods for Adding Herbs to Soap

My favorite way to make soap is cold-processing, but you can also add herbs with these methods when hot-processing. Since the saponification has already occurred in melt and pour soaps, simply use dried herbs on top or within your creations.

1) Hot or Cold Oil Infusion

Whether you pour hot oil over herbs and allow it to cool, or set the jar of oils and herbs on your windowsill for 6 weeks, an oil infusion is a wonderful way to add color and medicinal properties to your soap.

Instructions for Hot oil Infusion:

Choose your recipe. Most have olive oil, so it’s usually a great choice to infuse so that you can substitute pure olive oil for your infused olive oil.

Heat 8oz oil over low heat until hot.

Place 1 tablespoon of dried herbs into a jar (or fill with fresh herbs).

Pour hot oil over herbs and allow to cool.

Let sit for 3-4 hours if time allows, otherwise you can use as soon as it cools.

Instructions for Cold Oil Infusion:

A lot of people choose the cold oil infusion method, because it is more gentle on the oil and herbs being used. Follow these instructions:

Place 1 tablespoon of dried herbs into a jar (or fill with fresh herbs).

Pour oil over herbs until covered and seal.

Lightly shake and set in sunny window sill for 2-4 weeks (longer if you are working on color infusion as well)

2) Lye Water Tea

Herbs can also be added to soap through the lye water. Simply make a tea, discard or save the herbs to be added later, and use the tea as the water within your soap recipe.

3) Added to the Top or Within Soap

Lastly, herbs can be added as decoration to the top of the soap or stirred within the soap before pouring.

When adding to the top of a batch of soap, simply sprinkle the desired herb on top of a thin traced batch, or use a gloved hand to gentle pat them into the top enough so that they “stick” and don’t fall off later.

When adding throughout your soap bar, add at trace and mix well.

4) Powdered

Another way to get that herbal power within soap is to add a finely powdered version to your lye water, soap batter, or oil in fusion. If you’re going for color at the same time, see my Natural Herbal Coloring Chart.

Prepping Herbs Before-Hand

A lot of herbs “bleed” within a soap bar if they are not soaked beforehand; leaving a brown halo around the herb within the soap.

To avoid this, first make a tea. You can discard the water if you are wanting to make your bars a lighter or particular color. Otherwise, use the tea water as your lye water and get added nourishment in your soap.

Add the used herbs into your soap at trace if desired. Most herbs added to the top will only brown slightly, if at all.

I’m finally going to infuse some oil with dried Lavendar ( after seeing it so often) in my next batch of soap! I’ve only used ground dried leaves and flowers sprinkled on the parchment or stirred a little in during trace…..which essentially amounts to nothing lol looking forward to seeing difference! BTW I do love using SoapCalc and have learned from there always to use some castor oil
for sudsy bubbles (5%).. Curious why you don’t ?
?Judy

I noticed that there isn’t much information about using dried hibiscus on your blog. Is there a reason why? It just so happens that I have dried hibiscus on hand and was looking for a recipe to incorporate it

Hi
I have a question about the chart on page 30-31 in your book Natural Soapmaking for Beginers.
When you say 1 ounce in place of olive oil in recipe for oil infusions I’m confused. 1 ounce of oil or of the natural addative? I understand that I am to use part of the olive oil from the recipe but how much oil, how much natural addative and when you add the infused oil is a mystery to me. Can you please explain?

Yes. A lot of times you may make a jarful of an infusion using olive oil and an herb – like olive oil and annatto seeds, or olive oil and spirulina. You only need to add a little of that colored oil to the soap recipe – especially when using a bright infused oil like annatto. More colored oil = brighter color so you can decide. If your recipe calls for 5 ounces of olive oil, you may want to use 4 ounces fresh olive oil and 1 ounce infused (maybe more, depending on the color you want to achieve, but adjust how much fresh oil you use accordingly so you always use the 5 ounces the recipe requires). Add the infused oil to the beginning when you are weighing and mixing all of your oils – before adding the lye water. If you want to only color half a batch, then wait until you’ve added the lye water and brought the soap to light trace, then divide the batch in half and add the infused oil to one half. Obviously, you only want to do this when using a little bit of colored oil or you’ll significantly raise the superfat of the one half. Raising one half from 5% to 15% is not that big a deal though so adding 1 ounce of colored oil to one half should be fine for most batches.